From The Cutting Room Floor
by Dearest's Historic Cadre
Summary: It's amazing that Tia Dalma can provide the gang with a dead captain, just when they need one. Here are the scenes that never made the film. Vaguely linked to 'Don't Give Up The Day Job, Love', but not necessarily.
1. strange cargo

One of the most remarkable things about Tortuga's two most popular ladies of pleasurable company, Scarlett and Giselle, was the way they knew everyone. _Everyone_. Their knowledge of freebooting history was matched only by the great first mate Gibbs, and he spent so much time drunk or inhabiting his superstition-strewn imagination that people often preferred to refer to one of the two ladies. Their know-who was so sought after that they actually made more money spinning tales than spinning around upside down around a pole in their corsets.

One of the other remarkable things, although less remarked on because so few people were intelligent enough to remark upon it, was the fact that they had an in-depth knowledge of pirate politics starting from thirty years ago, when they didn't look much older than twenty-two. Indeed, the ravages of living on a pirate isle, the privation and the cruel climate and the degrading circumstances, showed not one blot on their flawless skins. They never seemed to get any older, either.

Giselle had bartered her first lover's sword for that. (It was worth it; Prince Albrecht was his name, and collecting unique weaponry and philandering was his game.) Scarlett had dug deep and given up a blood-ruby set in silver, a family heirloom. And, of course, if Tia Dalma ever needed any aid, the girls had no choice but to help her anyway they could.

That was why they were sitting in a small boat in one of the coves, shivering, instead of sitting in a bar, shimmying. Tia Dalma had said 'at the full moon'. Trust her not to specify a time.

"I 'ope this ain't going to be gooey," muttered Giselle, blowing ineffectually on her small, dainty hands, which were going stiff in the unusual chill. "Remember when she 'ad that enchanted gold deal, and she needed it to be stashed for a bit? And we kept it under your bed? She never said enchanted gold turns all yuck in the daylight."

Scarlett nodded. "Eet was 'orrible. We 'ad to move out." She'd never trained her French accent to leave her speech alone, it was an asset for her particular business.

_Splash. Splash. Splash_.

Giselle and Scarlett sat up. Oars, when they are used correctly, do not go 'splash'. They make a whispery wet noise, very conducive for those with full bladders.

_Splash. Splash._

Tia Dalma had never learned to row properly. Why should she need to? If she wanted to move, the current agreed with her, even if it meant flowing uphill. But sometimes it paid to look unsuspicious, especially if you're carrying a large black bundle in your boat that looks suspiciously like a dead body.

Scarlett groaned. "Thees time," she grumbled, "eet goes under _your_ bed."

_Splash. Splash. Thump_.

Tia Dalma didn't know how to stop boats either.

When Giselle and Scarlett had steadied themselves, they were looking right into her famous smile. Both girls instinctively ran their tongues over their teeth.

"Hallo, Tia Dalma," they chorused, like good schoolchildren.

She widened the smile a little. "You looking well," she said, "of course." They tittered nervously, but she'd already become business like, lifting and unwrapping the bundle.

Giselle looked over. "Ah. 'As he bin dead long?"

"Twelve month." That made them uncomfortable. "But I put a stop to dat." That made it worse.

"Then 'e ees… what ees the word? _Zombi_?"

"Same word in English," Giselle said. She looked at the prone figure. "Ur. Yuck. Do bits start dropping off?"

Tia Dalma laughed, something she did with great abandon, tossing her dreadlocks over one exposed, perfect shoulder. "I did no voodoo to dis man," she replied, once the laughter had settled down. "Him just as alive as you or me. Well, maybe less dan you or me." She started to laugh again. "But as alive as anyone else on dis island!"

As if to confirm this, the prone figure groaned, stirred a little, and belched. This was sufficient proof to the girls- zombies, as a rule, don't belch.

"What would you like us to do to heem?" Scarlett asked.

"T'ree days I need you to keep him," Tia Dalma told them. "Den, you give him to Latonya."

The mention of one of Tortuga's other 'entertainers' made both girls sit bolt upright, as if indignation had been rammed down their spines. "What, you don't trust us?" snapped Giselle.

Tia Dalma smiled at them and they both slumped slightly. "Dat's not de point," she said. "Latonya can travel out of Tortuga at an hour's notice. You girls, you got an image to maintain, loose ends to tie up. Latonya is liked, but she don't matter to de island like you do."

That was explanation enough. Giselle and Scarlett preened, and helped Tia Dalma heave the body into their boat.

"Do you recognise him?" asked Tia Dalma, as she settled back in her boat. (One of the oars had sunk to the bottom of the water whilst they were exchanging cargo, but Tia Dalma didn't need to look inconspicuous anymore and could cheerfully float off without it.)

Giselle rolled her eyes. _"Course_ we do," she said, wearily. "We can read Wanted posters, y'know."

Tia Dalma gave them one last smile- it was peculiar how a mouth so full of rotting, brown monstrosities could compose so agreeable a grin- and drifted serenely into the enveloping black.


	2. waking up

Hangovers are not nice things to wake up to. Waking up after having been dead for a year is even worse. Imagine that lump of nauseous pain in the stomach, bubbling its way through your digestive system, times it by fifty and then spread it all over the body.

"Aah. Back in de land of de living."

The speaker, by their voice alone, could easily be mistaken for an opium addict, but this was just part of Latonya Vaughn's languid, lazy and terminally laid back personality. She boasted Jamaican descent, though her profile was more chiselled than the average African, and claimed this helped her never, ever worry about anything. Very likely, her unladylike height and her strong, handsome, tough frame added to her supreme detachment. Rounded off with her total inability to hold grudges or even dislike people, and you got a personality so relaxed it was amazing Latonya even bothered to wake up.

She was slumped on the ragged remains of a daybed, watching with interest Tia Dalma's unfortunate's attempts to focus.

When he did, he started to wail softly. "Oh nooo," he moaned. "Oh _noooo_."

Latonya flopped off the daybed and crawled sleepily over to him. She gave him a few prods in the stomach and he doubled up. _"Noooooo."_

"Yesss," she countered. "Lotsa yesssss."

"I'm on Tortuga, aren't I?" muttered the unfortunate.

"Can smell it, right?" Latonya chuckled. "You've been unconscious between Giselle and Scarlett for t'ree days. Them dropped you off dis morning."

"Giselle and Scarlett?" he echoed. "The hell yer say. Hang on… let me check for bruises…"

"No, they treat you good. Tia Dalma, she say so."

He lay quite still. "The voodoo woman?"

"Yea."

"I'm not dead." He sat bolt upright. "Bigod." He tore open his shirt and looked down onto a mottled, muscular chest, scattered with wiry grey hairs. There was a black circle on his chest, puckered and still tender. "Hah," he said softly. "That's one in the eye for Jack Sparrow."

He turned to Latonya, who was watching him through heavily lidded eyes. "And how d'yer come to be caught up in this… Miss Vaughn?"

Latonya clapped her hands. "Aii! Him remember me!"

He raised his eyebrows wearily. "Ye be quite popular with my crew," he muttered, "if memory serves correctly." He stared her over. "Have yer aged, Miss Vaughn? I'll swear to the Devil it's been over ten years since any of my men enjoyed yer company, yet yer look as fresh as ever…"

She gave him a cheerful grin and ignored him. "You want some breakfast, Captain Barbossa?"

He luxuriated in the title. "Oh aye. Have ye any apples?"

Whilst Latonya bustled into the noisome little room that served her as a kitchen, Barbossa (for it was he) took stock of his surroundings. Latonya's hut was perched on the edge of the town, messily decorated with booty, and unbelievably dirty. A tasteless coffee table, tacky to touch and piled high with books, stood next to her enormous and infested bed, which Barbossa was lying on. He idly picked up a book and glanced over it, but it was in a strange language, so he put it down again. His hat was lying on the floor. It did not look well, but there was nowhere cleaner to put it.

He was faintly aware of being dead, as one is aware of a figure standing behind one's back without needing to look, but if he concentrated on the memory for more than a few seconds it slipped away from his thoughts, like a tendril of fog vainly pursued with a butterfly net. The memory that was taking up the most room was, surprisingly, nothing that happened on the Isla de Muerta. It was the moment just before he'd marooned Jack for the second time- when he'd put his arm around Jack's shoulders, saying, _"That's the island we made yer governor of on our last visit!"_, he'd noticed the musky, grubby, honey-like scent of Jack's skin. This smell was replaying over and over in his memory, not helping Barbossa's indigestion at all.

Latonya returned and dumped a tray of food on Barbossa's lap, making him wince.

"You want anything else?" she purred.

He gave her a withering look, with extra wither. "No. Yer know that."

She grinned at him, heaved herself onto the bed, and fell asleep beside him, in the same smooth movement. With any other woman Barbossa would have gotten immensely nervous and instinctively tightened his belt, but Latonya would go to sleep anywhere.

He prodded his food instead. Latonya had kindly provided an apple, as well as some miscellaneous seafood soup. Seafood was Latonya's speciality, and Barbossa had learnt that meals that look as though they had been regurgitated tended to be the better at keeping out the cold. He ate it with gusto.

When he had finished, he swung himself off the bed- Latonya didn't move- and padded outside. Even at the edge of the town the heat of the fires, teamed with the heady climate of the area, made the air hellishly hot. Barbossa loved it- it had been far too long since he'd sweated a good, honest sweat. He wondered who he knew in town who would buy him a drink.


	3. tia dalma's terms

For three days- 't'ree days'- Barbossa refused to discuss anything with Latonya. She'd begin with, "Tia Dalma say dat.." or, "You wanta know why…" and he'd flash her a look, draw in his breath sharply or even just go completely still. Latonya would never pursue the sentence.

Nor did he attempt to renew contacts, look up old acquaintances, threaten or exhort or do anything other than drink, eat, and sleep. He barely uttered a word at all. But he could feel hot, remorseless life refilling his veins with every debaucherous hour, and for three days just the sensation of being alive again, after undeath and death, was almost too much pleasure to bear.

At the end of the third day, he went for a swim in the bay.

Hitting the salt water almost killed him. He screamed softly, swamped by the biting, saline cold. He'd forgotten the thrill of the sea, even at the shallows. He splashed loudly for a few minutes, marvelling at the sensation of spray on his face, then knelt down so his face was underwater, and blew bubbles. A lobster investigated his knee.

"Bllbbbrrr," he said. "BbblllrrrllBBBllllRRrr!"

When he ran out of air, he bobbed back up again, and started to doggy-paddle back to the beach. He winked up at the moon, which seemed disinclined to make a walking skeleton out of him.

Latonya was sitting on the beach, on his pile of clothes, wearing a man's shirt and a ragged skirt, drinking rum. "Fun?" she asked, as he waded ashore.

"Better than rum," he said, giving her bottle an askance look. "My God, but I've missed the sea."

She was looking him over with a grin on her face. "You swim in underwear?"

He looked down. "Don't want any mermaids to fall hopelessly in love with me now, do I?" he replied, trying to look dignified. "Get orf my clothes if yer don't like what yer see."

Latonya fell onto her side and he tugged his oversized breeches over his sodden drawers. He sat down beside her, barefoot, and took the rum off her. She sneezed out some sand and sat up.

They watched the breakers for a while.

She started to say, "So, you wanta know why…?" He made a noncommittal grunting noise, so Latonya launched lethargically into her explanation.

"Jack Sparra, him done bad, done made a deal with Davy Jones. You ever wonder where _De Black Pearl_ came from?" Barbossa shurgged- in truth, it hadn't bothered him in the slightest. "Well, Jack Sparra done promised a soul to Davy for t'irteen years of sailing."

Barbossa smirked. "He got short-changed. He only lasted two years."

Latonya cocked her head to him to show she was listening, but made no reply to his quiet boast. She continued, "T'irteen years are up. Davy Jones wants payment."

Barbossa shrugged. "And what's this got ter do with me? Please note: ay, he's Captain Jack Sparrow, Miss Vaughn. He's famous fer wriggling out of every tight spot." Barbossa's face clouded over slightly as he said this. "And, bee, if yer remember, I_ mutinied_ _against him_. If I could help, I wouldn't, and I can't, so there's not much point in talking to me."

Latonya was listening to him politely. Having her head on one side made her resemble an intelligent bird, which in truth she had more in common with than a human woman- she couldn't read, Barbossa recalled, she couldn't write, she liked brightly coloured things but lacked a sense of style and connection, and of course she sang, slightly off-key, all manner of strange, half-coherent songs. Quite suddenly, as he was reflecting on this, Latonya half clambered, half fell out of her clothes and wandered into the water. Barbossa shrugged and lay back on the sand.

About fifteen minutes later (just as he was dozing peacefully off), Latonya returned and sat, mothernaked and dripping, beside him. Both her breasts and her biceps were large and round, and she had chest muscles that made Barbossa feel very inferior. As he watched, her ebony, lacquered skin dried.

"Watch my hair," she instructed. Barbossa had in fact been fascinated by the oily slide of her thigh muscles beneath her skin (bigods, but he wouldn't want to take on this woman in a boxing ring), but he transferred his gaze lazily.

Latonya's afro had been fluffed out by the swim, but as he watched it curled inwards, tightening. Barbossa was reminded irresistibly of Medusa.

When her hair had settled down, he said, "Very clever. What was that in aid of?"

"You know how I do that?"

"No."

"Neither do I." She stretched out an arm. "You see how my skin is not affected by de seawater?"

He admired the arm. "Yes, well done."

"You see how I do not age?"

"Yes." He didn't like where this was going. Latonya's usually calm voice was marked by some agitated inflection. "Lucky you."

"You wanta know what I gave Tia Dalma for this gift?"

Barbossa sighed. "No, I don't."

"Good, because I ain't telling you." She grinned, and leaned back on her elbows. The moonlight made her belly-button shine silver. She looked like a carving.

At length, Barbossa said, "Yer know, I didn't ask the voodoo woman to bring me back ter life."

"She gone done it anyway," Latonya replied, "and now yer life depend on her."

Barbossa didn't like to inquire how she'd managed the transformation, and somehow he doubted Latonya's avian intellect would have the capacity to give him the answer. He'd have to find out later. "And what does she want from me?" he asked, softly.

"Jack Sparra going to die," Latonya said. She spoke levelly once again, and it took a moment or two for the meaning of her words to sink in. "Tia Dalma can feel it- don't ask me how she knows. But him can't cheat the sea, him a sailor, same as you. But you, you been dead, you got the know-how to bring him home."

"That's news to me," snapped Barbossa. _Why_, he was thinking, _why do I always, always end up trailing around after Jack? Do I have to be his first mate for the rest of my life?_

Latonya shrugged. "Tia Dalma say so. She say dat sleep is a shadow of death, and in dreams, dere is a map of de path."

"And if I decide not to give Tia Dalma my map?" Barbossa asked, drily.

Latonya gave him a grin. "Den you die in your sleep."


	4. first dream

In fact, that night when Barbossa dreamed, he dreamed not of any sort of map, path, outline or clue. He dreamt firstly about Jack himself.

"_Hallo, mate,"_ Jack said. They were onboard a wrecked ship, surrounded by the dead bodies of one of Jack's many crews. Closer inspection revealed the ship to be the remains of _The Black Pearl_, and the crew Barbossa vaguely recognised as some of Tortuga's dregs. _"Yer looking very well for a dead person."_

"Right back at yer, Jack," muttered Barbossa. He was surveying the bodies with great distaste- Jack's habit of getting almost every member of his crew killed because of some ridiculous, half-magical mission he was on was part and package of the reasons Barbossa had betrayed Jack.

Jack gave him the laugh Barbossa used to mentally term the Tarnished Silver Bells Laugh. It used to have a devastating effect on Barbossa- one brief guffaw and any previous indignation would melt away under the blowtorch of Jack's charm. He gritted his teeth.

"_Missed me, Barbie?"_ asked Jack.

"No," Barbossa replied, a tad too quickly.

Jack twinkled humorously at him and quirked an eyebrow. (The eyebrow had bad effects on Barbossa too. Memories came flooding thick and fast, poured up against the side of the boat, and sank down again into the sea.) _"Course you have, love,"_ he said. _"Missed yer wifey. Missed the good ole days when we were one happy, smelly, unbelievably evil family."_

"Yer never gave a damn about us," Barbossa said softly. "And yer never called me 'love' so don't start that."

Jack grinned. _"How's Latonya?"_

Ah yes. Latonya had been on Jack's list of conquered women. "Fine," he growled.

"_Have you seen that trick she does with the peaches and those silver rings?"_

"Ye know perfectly well I never go with the wimmin," Barbossa told him.

At that line, Jack started to fade away, rather abruptly and without any preliminaries. Barbossa lunged forwards to snatch at him, but found he was clapped in irons. When he looked around, the _Pearl_ was spotless once more and the corpses had vanished.

Someone rounded the mast. Barbossa groaned aloud and felt a mad desire to rattle his chains and start chanting, "Ooh, dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones." The ineffectual, dreadful and horribly monobrowed Mariella Suzella Lovehaste always had that effect on him.

She was in what she probably thought was pirate fare- her awful leather breeches, a full-sleeved shirt that puckered strangely over her flat, bony chest, a huge leather belt, a ridiculous ornate sword, an extravagant royal blue coat with gold edging, and a hat with a peacock feather stuck in it at a rakish angle. In Barbossa's dream, she looked paler and thinner than he remembered. Since Lovehaste was a white-complexioned, skinny wretch of a woman, she came to resemble a translucent skeleton.

"_Darling,"_ she said.

"Argh!" said Barbossa.

She gave him a sickly grin. _"Alright, I know, our love was never to be."_ Barbossa rolled his eyes; that was another thing that always bothered him about Lovehaste. He had met her by destroying her ship and absentmindedly rescuing her. It seemed to appropriate thing to do at the time, but Lovehaste had turned out to be convinced she was a 'Mary Sue' character (whatever that was) in a 'fanfiction' (whatever _that_ was), and seemed adamant that they were destined to be lovers. Since Barbossa would happily wed a cuttlefish with STDs over Lovehaste, she had had to do some serious plot redrafting.

She stood squarely in front of him now, and rolled up a sleeve with difficultly.

"_Remember this?" _she asked him, neutrally.

Barbossa stared at the diagonal gash across the taut white flesh of her arm. "Aye," he confirmed. He felt slightly embarrassed, partly because he had a feeling Lovehaste would want him to feel guilty about it, which he didn't, and partly because he felt that he'd been overly dramatic when he'd slashed her arm.

Lovehaste seemed satisfied with this answer, and drew no more attention to the scar. _"You haven't come to see me in a while,"_ she said, playfully accusing. Lovehaste being playfully accusing reminded Barbossa markedly of a vulture batting its eyelashes and blowing kisses from behind its wings, but he couldn't let that pass.

"Sorry, I've been dead. Yer know how it is- busy busy busy, all that catching up with men whose throats I slit in the living world, playing poker with the Devil, being tossed in brimstone. It eats inter yer time."

She smiled. _"Pity. If you'd stayed there long enough, you could have bumped into Jack."_

Barbossa winced. He'd revealed certain truths about himself to Lovehaste in a rare moment of shared drunkenness and camaraderie, and had lived to regret it. "It seems I'll be chasing the bugger in any case," he muttered.

She clapped her hands together. _"Yay! The Further Adventures of Captain Barbossa, Scourge of the Seas! Come and see me soon- you know how good I am at reading maps!"_

This, at least, was true. "Yes, I can tell by yer enormous forehead that yer've got brains in there somewhere." Barbossa privately suspected Lovehaste of having an enormous amount of intelligent and a savagely good capacity for puzzles, but absolutely no creativity and a total inability to think original thoughts. Quite likely intellectual conundrums were the only way she could let off the excess thought-power, because she lacked the artistic ability to even draw convincing stick-men. He remembered once, when he'd gone to visit her during the days of the curse (why oh why did he stay in contact with her?), and they'd had a mad conversation about the nature of justice. Much later, he'd read a badly printed book bearing some sappy title, designed to appeal to women like Lovehaste, and found that her half of the conversation was almost word for word taken from the dialogue of the buxom, swashbuckling heroine in the book. He'd laughed for days.

"_When you come, I've got a surprise for you," _she said, smiling. Barbossa recognised that smile. It made him want to crawl to Tia Dalma on his belly, kiss all ten of her toes five times over and beg to be returned to the land of the dead. _"And it's funny you should be thinking of Tia Dalma,"_ she added, and Barbossa cursed. Dreams were so annoying when they took advantage of the fact that they knew what you were thinking.

"Why?" he muttered darkly. Then he felt his body grow clammy, and he said, "What did you give her for it?"

Lovehaste giggled. It was not a nice sound. _"Information_," she replied, and leaned forward to give Barbossa a kiss on the cheek. Barbossa howled and tried to slap her away, and woke up rather suddenly when his fist connected with Latonya's temple.

"Nuh?" said Latonya, and fell off the bed.

Barbossa sat bolt upright. "Miss Vaughn?" he called, to the spread-eagled figure on the floor.

"Yuh?"

"Get dressed." Latonya slept in her clothes anyway. "I need a ship. I need my crew. No, _first_ I need a disposable crew, some cannon fodder, because I need to raid Port Royale. _Then_ I will have what of my original crew is left. _Then_ we need to go to," he frowned, and searched his memory, "a certain island," he finished lamely. "There's a woman I have to talk to. God help me," he added, glumly.

**A/N. For further information on Lovehaste, read 'Don't Give Up The Day Job, Love'. It's not necessary for future consumption of this story, but it's a better fic and far more amusing, though I say it myself. modest cough**


	5. port royale's moment in the spotlight

Governor Swann did not particularly enjoy being under house arrest, but what really got to him was that they'd taken his wig. He loved his wig. He'd battled with undead pirates, enraged agents from the East India Company and head lice for his wig. He could tweak the curls into place just by feel, he needed no mirror. He bought his clothes to match his wig. And now they'd taken his wig away.

He'd tried wearing a bed-cap, but somehow it wasn't the same.

At about ten-thirty in the evening (he'd been watching the clock gloomily since seven), he heard the distant boom of cannon fire, and he'd wandered wearily over to the window to take a look. Once upon a time he might have been scared, but to be quite frank he was too depressed to feel anything other than mild surprise.

Some brain cell registered that all the cannon fire was directed at the prison walls, and that there seemed to be an awful lot of men falling off the ship doing the firing, as if the captain didn't mind too much what happened to this crew, but Governor Swann was not in the mood to mull this over. All that this observation stirred was a faint sense of relief that Elizabeth had escaped and was not in any danger of being blown to pieces, but then his mind got all morbid over what could be happening to his slender, delicate, impetuous daughter.

As he was brooding over this (he'd just got the bit in his imagination where Elizabeth was surviving on nothing except salted meat and pickled eggs, and was getting very ill as a result), he noticed one of the cannon balls scored a direct hit and a flood of very nasty looking pirates poured out. He vaguely recognised them too- they were the naughty bunch awaiting execution after the Sparrow adventure. They appeared to have recognised someone on board the attacking ship, for they were cheering and plunging into the sea.

Some sensible person had evidently got over the shock of being attacked and were now commanding small ships to give chase, but the pirate ship (Governor Swann noticed for the first time the flag) was having none of this. _Boom. Boom. Boom._ There seemed to be nothing on this ship except cannon balls and men. Unlucky for the chasers, then.

The newly-freed buccaneers were climbing up ropes draped over the side of the boats with worrying agility. Cries of, "Arrr!" and "Let's go, me hearties!" could be heard even from the Governor's distant position.

He watched the ship sweep off around the cliff, out into the open sea, and for the first time in a week he grinned.

Let's see you negotiate that, Lord Beckett, he thought. And then he thought a rude word, just because he could.


	6. preparations

Barbossa beamed.

"Weatherby!" he cried, and tweaked the ear of the pirate. Weatherby gave him a happy grin and heaved another few corpses over the side. Barbossa fancied the boat surged forward.

"Maximo!" He received a rib-crushing hug. "Simbakka!" The addressed pirate rapped his chest in a kind of tribal salute. "Hawksmoor! Katracho! Scratch! Nipperkin! Ketchum! Scarus!" He called their names one by one, squeezed their hands, slapped their backs. "Dog Ear!"

He faced them all from the helm. "Gents," he called, "it's good ter be back." This elicited cries of agreement and the occasional nonsensical hoot of delight. "And now we're back," Barbossa yelled over the noise, "let's see to it that everyone knows about it!"

That went down well. Almost a year of rotting in jail had not been suffered well by these freedom-loving, law-ignoring, throat-slitting, scurvy-ridden men.

"Firstly, lads," Barbossa continued, "we're a-going ter visit our only true mother-country, Tortuga!" He had to wait for a bit for the wolf whistles and shrieks of joy to die down. "I'm sure you've got a lot of catching up ter do!" Shouts of, "Bloody right!" "So you know the way! Open the sails!"

"Arr!" every man exclaimed. "Arr!" This is pirate for, "Why certainly captain, we would be delighted."

Barbossa gave the helm to Monk, who gave him a teary little smile and said, "It's good to see yer again, Cap'n Barbossa," and strode over to the starboard side, where Latonya was being sick.

"Feeding the fishes, Miss Vaughn?" he asked, with gruff cheerfulness.

She looked up for a moment and gave him a rictus grin. "Yuh," she managed, before a fresh wave of her lobster-and-herbs barrelled up her throat. Barbossa waited patiently for her to finish. Latonya was unused to both sailing and the sight of men being blown up by cannon fire, and was dealing with it as messily as she could.

Maximo, Barbossa's first mate, thundered heavily up behind him. "What are der bearings fo' post-Tortuga, sah?"

Barbossa grinned. Maximo could always be depended upon to be one step ahead of the game. "We're going to visit the wench," he replied. Maximo laughed heavily.

"'Tis pity Ragetti is no longa with us," he announced in his ponderous voice.

Oh yes- Ragetti and Lovehaste had had some sort of chaste love-affair, mainly through letters. It had all started on the fateful day Barbossa, bored and irritated by Lovehaste's monobrow, had instructed Ragetti to pluck it for her. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Ragetti was... well, he was a pirate."

"Oh, him still alive," Maximo said dismissively. "Him and Pintel broke outta prison. Didn't have time to save us," he added scornfully.

Barbossa frowned, suddenly furious. "Deserted our little family, did they?" he growled. "Never mind. The time will come, Maximo, when I shall be face ter face with them, and they'll rue the day. I will pers'nally make sure of it."

Latonya came up for air. "They done what's right by dem," she said, mildly.

Maximo beared all his teeth at her. "Whore! You got no say in dis."

Latonya gave him a puzzled smile. Too late, Barbossa realised she didn't have any concept of loyalty- she did things for people because she liked everyone, not because she was bound to them- and was unaware of her status as a lady of pleasure- she made love because she liked it, and the men, through force of habit, left her money, which she tended just to take as a favour. Stupidity or absentmindedness prevented her from understanding either idea.

"Ignore her," he muttered to Maximo. "Yer know what these Tortuga ladies are like."

Maximo gave one last threatening growl and stomped off.

Latonya cast an admiring glance at his back. "Him got a good spine," she said, appraisingly. Barbossa sighed. One of these days, Latonya's relaxed attitude to everything was going to get her cut into very small pieces.

The pit-stop at Tortuga turned into a seventy two hour party. Normally, Barbossa would forcibly rally his men into action, but he knew only too well what they had suffered, and didn't have the heart to stop them. Instead he took small boats out to neighbouring islands with a few select men and did a spot of small-scale killing and pillaging, just to get back into the swing of things. The swag he amassed was hardly legendary stuff, but it was enough to pay for repairs on their new boat (named _The Revenge_) and for his men to get well and truly legless.

He moved out of Latonya's grubby house to stay with the rest of his crew in the two floors they took over when they came to stay at Tortuga, above a pub called something obscene. Latonya busied herself packing. Some unspoken agreement- Barbossa suspected Tia Dalma had arranged matters- meant that the unnautical Latonya would be accompanying them to visit Lovehaste. He couldn't help noticing he didn't dream at all over the next three nights- no doubt Tia Dalma had arranged that too.

On the morning of the fourth day, they put to sea again. Barbossa was touched to see every hand was on deck, standing close to the rails, eyes shut and never wiping the spray of the water from their faces.


	7. rendezvous with lovehaste

For some reason- probably because of that vivid dream- Barbossa was expecting Lovehaste to be expecting him. He was slightly annoyed when there was no skinny, tottering figure standing on a jetty to greet him when they docked.

Lovehaste, due to her slightly deranged view of the world, tended to be permanently on the lookout for what Barbossa called 'adventure' and what she called 'the perfect plotline'. As a result, she moved around the Caribbean a lot, but never forgot to leave her full address with Ragetti's mother on Tortuga.

Currently she was residing in a rather civilised looking town that occupied the edge of a surprisingly big island. The scents of people living peaceful lives- cooking, the metallic tang of the smithies, the stench of the open sewers, the gas from the streetlamps- and the babble of pleasant, everyday noises was a strange greeting for pirates. They were under strict instructions to act like off-duty sailors around the places where Lovehaste lived. Barbossa was worried Lovehaste would come out and shout at him, or worse, insist on joining in, if they started pillaging. He always made it up to them the moment she moved out- some of the worst atrocities _The Black Pearl_ committed during the cursed days were a result of Lovehaste's continued residence in the area.

The pirates wandered sheepishly towards the red-light district. Occasionally one of them would shout, "Gragh!" at a passerby and make them jump, to let off some steam. Latonya placidly followed them, looking about with great interest and smiling at everyone.

Barbossa set off down what passed for a high street in the settlements. His nautical sway, his strange clothes, and of course his air of extreme nastiness, made people cross to the other side of the street to avoid him. To amuse himself, he zigzagged across the road for a while. People fell over themselves to get out of his way.

Twenty minutes zigzagging and strolling parked him outside a small house, painted yellow for some unfathomable reason, with dahlias growing outside. Barbossa glared at the dahlias. There was something profoundly insulting about being greeted by dahlias. He trod on a few, and pounded at the door.

"Hang on," fluted a well-spoken, feminine voice. Barbossa gritted his teeth. Even after a decade, he still found Lovehaste's immaculate English accent irritating. He chewed on his tongue for a bit, to relieve the desire to punch her on her prominent nose when she opened the door.

It swung open dramatically- Lovehaste was a great believer in drama- to reveal the woman herself.

Lovehaste, characterised by her single terrible eyebrow, her brittle thinness and her dun-coloured skin, was never going to be a beautiful woman, or even an acceptable looking one. Growing older did not really help. She was in her early thirties, and looked it. In fact, she had the face of a woman who was _in her early thirties_, but it was plain to see on her visage what she would look like _in her late forties_. She didn't _look_ it, but it was obvious from her face that she was going to get old and wrinkly. Lovehaste really was dealt more of a foot than a hand in the great card game that is life.

She gaped a lot at him, then goggled, then switched back to gaping.

"Captain!" she exclaimed.

"Hallo, Lovehaste," he said, unable to keep the gloom out of his voice. He couldn't help noticing she was wearing an elbow length dress, which showed the scar on her arm rather prominently. "Long time no see."

"I thought you were _dead_!" shrieked Lovehaste, and before Barbossa could stop her she threw her arms about his neck.

He untangled himself, took her by the nose and pulled her inside the house. She started to cry with happiness. They were real tears of happiness too, not her usual the-story-requires-that-I-cry tears; Barbossa could always tell, because real tears made her nose run even more than her eyes.

He sat her down on a chair and wiped his hand on her skirt. She didn't seem to notice.

Between sobs she managed, "So Tia Dalma brought you back!"

Barbossa heaved the loudest, longest groan he could manage. "Why does she turn up _everywhere I go_?" he shouted. Lovehaste stopped crying and started to shush him. "Don't shush me Lovehaste!" he snapped. "I am not in the mood ter be shushed. Shushing will not happen in my vicinity. Yer've reached the end of shush."

"You- you lifted the curse then," Lovehaste murmured. "Did you find Bootstrap?"

"No," Barbossa said, rolling his eyes. He'd tried explaining before that Bootstrap Bill was nigh unfindable, what with being somewhere in the seven seas, but Lovehaste always ignored details she didn't understand. "I found his offspring," Barbossa replied, and recounted briefly his traumatic few days before his death. Whenever he mentioned Jack, Lovehaste's eyes would go wide and give him a significant look, but he ignored that.

When he finished, she stood up and said, "I expect you'd like a drink."

"I always do," he replied, and grinned when she returned with some decent wine.

Lovehaste was privy to the effects of the curse because she'd been unlucky enough to have it for a few months. It was she who'd eventually managed to make some sense of Jack's maps and Jack's directions to the Isla de Muerta, and when Barbossa had found the cursed gold, he'd taken a few pieces to give to her. Being a sap, she'd drilled holes in them and worn them around her neck.

It was not long after this that Barbossa and his crew had discovered that the curse was more than a ghost story, and they'd spent a horrible few months trying to find out how it was lifted. The knowledge that Bootstrap Bill's blood was needed to lift it made Barbossa near to insane with fury. He hated, oh he hated, when he made mistakes.

When he'd revisited Lovehaste, he found her sitting patiently on a jetty, looking like living death (which she was- she was under a scrap of moonlight). The moss growing up her dress suggested she'd been waiting there for some time. Her unusual silence, more accusing than her usual squeaky, oddly-worded reprimands, incited more anger on Barbossa's part. When the time came to spill her blood, he had dragged his dagger across the veins in her arm, fully intending to kill her.

The anger dissipated of course, but not before Lovehaste nearly did die. He rather suspected Destiny was teaching him a lesson in compassion, but since a) he felt no guilt about it and b) Lovehaste never mentioned it again, he had a feeling Destiny had its head up its arse. Moreover, Lovehaste had returned to the living on that night, whereas the pirates stayed cursed. He'd resented her for that.

"I need a favour, Lovehaste," he said to her now, as she drank her wine in delicate, affected sips.

"That's always why you visit me," she said, giving what she probably thought was a coquettish smile- Lovehaste had heard of coquettes and her smile suggested she thought they were a kind of coconut.

He sighed, and she hastily added, "Tia Dalma intimated it might have something to do with map reading."

He stared at her, doing the Evil Pirate Captain Deadpan face. It always made her uncomfortable. "If Tia Dalma," and he said the name as one would usually say 'plague-ridden bilge rat', "said I'd be coming, why did yer think I was dead?"

Lovehaste went pink. She mumbled something in which the word 'zombie' was distinguishable. _Oh, so she doesn't know how I got back either_, thought Barbossa, without surprise. _I suppose I'll have ter ask the voodoo woman myself_.

"I- I knew she was going to bring you back," Lovehaste said, shyly. "I had to give her some information to help her."

"What kind of information?" Barbossa asked in a dangerously soft voice.

"A-a-about you and Jack," Lovehaste said, shading to a novel shade of magenta. "She- she said she needed to know about your heart, if she was to make it start beating again."

Barbossa briefly toyed with the idea of giving Lovehaste a smack in the chops, but decided he couldn't be bothered. "What did she give you in return?" he asked, rather tiredly, to block out the mental images of what Lovehaste, with her unique ability to interpret everything the wrong way, would have told Tia Dalma.

Lovehaste went completely silent. "I- I don't know how to tell you," she mumbled.

Barbossa was about to lose his temper, when suddenly something _bloody awful_ happened in his chest and he dropped off his chair, clutching at it and hissing with agony through his teeth.


	8. a bundle of not very much joy

"Captain?" squeaked Lovehaste, flailing about and flapping her narrow hands a few inches above Barbossa's bowed head. "Are you alright?"

_Of course I'm not bloody alright. What do yer think I'm doing, alternative callisthenics? _"nnGggk," was all, however, that he managed to say.

His chest was in _agony_. Barbossa forced himself to lower his hand and, trembling violently, took a look at his chest, completely expecting to see blood gushing out of the gunshot wound. Instead, before his very eyes, the scar was contorting, writhing... disappearing...

It vanished with a noise very much like _schlup_, and the pain vanished with it.

Barbossa breathed out. "Voodoo woman," he muttered. "What has she done?"

Lovehaste did not answer, because she made a little yelping noise, went absolutely rigid and keeled over.

He sighed. The last thing he needed was his map-reader fainting before he'd even had time to have one dream. He hauled her, none too gently, into a chair, and slapped her around the face a couple of times. When this had no effect, other than to give her cheeks a bit of colour, he decided he'd throw some water at her. He picked a doorway and strolled in.

It failed to be a kitchen. It was a bedroom, with a small but very ornate single bed (for some reason, the smallness and obvious singularity of the bed made Barbossa smile wryly), an overcrowded dressing table, eye-watering red wallpaper and a cot. It was the cot that prevented Barbossa from exiting and looking for the kitchen. He frowned at it and peered over.

As he looked inside, his mind drifted back to a memory- either the third or fourth year of the curse, he couldn't remember- when he'd gone to visit Lovehaste (she was living in a treehouse with a little foreign family on one of the most beautiful islands outside of Paradise at the time) to see how she was getting along. He'd brought a dress with him. He sometimes bought Lovehaste dresses from a quiet little shop that specialised in corsets creating bosoms and playing down ribcages for the 'slighter lady', because, he reasoned, he may as well have Lovehaste looking as nice as she meagrely could if he _had_ to look at her.

This was a particularly lovely dress, a rich purple silk affair with full, elegant sleeves and black Chantilly lace edging. She'd come out to greet him (rubbing at her scar) and he'd dumped in on her lap.

"_Present,"_ he'd said, by way of greeting.

She'd given him a sad smile, one of those alas-if-only-but-no smiles that made her look as if she had gas. _"You must stop giving me these lovely things,"_ she'd murmured.

Barbossa had got huffy, understandably. _"Oh, that's nice. That's wonderful gratitude, that is."_

She'd shaken her daft head, still holding that sad smile in place. Barbossa had briefly wondered whether it was detachable. _"What's the point of my looking pretty?"_ she'd asked. Barbossa was about to tell her his eyes could only take so much abuse, but she talked over him. _"After all, I'll never have a true love now, will I?"_

"_We might lift the curse,"_ he'd said bitterly. _"Then ye can have Ragetti."_ Ragetti and Lovehaste were still shyly blushing at each other during this period. _"Yer can go the whole way- white wedding, fifteen babies, house with a farm out back, the works."_

"_I can't have children,"_ Lovehaste had replied, suddenly going all prim on him. _"I'd rather not discuss it either, thank you so very much."_

In the event, he'd taken the dress back after she'd only worn it once. The next woman to wear it was the similarly slim and slight Miss Swann. It had to be said, even though the dress was made for Lovehaste's measurements, Elizabeth Swann had looked a thousand times more attractive.

So it was a sensation of shock that overcame Barbossa when he saw the snoozing pink sausage of a baby in the cot.

Oh well, at least now he knew what Tia Dalma had given Lovehaste in return for 'information'. He said a string of rude things, centring on casting aspersions on the two women's species and working up from there. How the hell was he going to persuade Lovehaste to take a brat of a few months old onto a ship, for ship read 'floating hothouse of disease'?

A groan and a fluted, "Oh! Where am I?" indicated Lovehaste had woken up and was going to play the fainting card for everything it was worth.

He strode back in. "Lovehaste," he snarled, and she jumped, apparently working out where she was very quickly.

"Y-yes, captain?" she asked, tremulously.

Barbossa pointed towards the bedroom and gave her a steely glare. Lovehaste made a wailing noise. "Oh, oh _please_ let me take him!" she exclaimed, starting up her pleading-with-bad-men sobs. "I will make sure he _never_ bothers you! Don't make me leave my baby!"

Barbossa was thrown slightly off course by this, (and rather creeped out by Lovehaste's use of 'my baby') but he was never one to let his guard down. "Ye had better not," he hissed at her, whilst inside he yowled with happy laughter and rolled around on the floor, making 'bduh bduh bduh' noises. "I hope yer realise it'll be dead within three days. I don't want yer cluttering up my ship with dear little coffins, understand? When it dies, yer toss it over the side."

Lovehaste had turned a sickly shade of spring green, but she nodded, weakly. Then she shuddered a full body shudder and sat down, heavily on the floor.

Barbossa's eye was drawn to her chest, for want of a better word. There was a rather familiar mark on her breastbone, circular, puckered and tender-looking, that he could swear wasn't there when he'd entered the house.

He smiled, grimly satisfied. _Ye evil bitch, Tia Dalma. Yer really know what yer doing, don't yer?_


	9. onwards

The meeting between Latonya and Lovehaste had been fun, at least from Barbossa's point of view.

Lovehaste had taken a small luggage full of things for 'the baby', and a few dresses for herself, and had tragically dressed in her horrible breeches and shirt. She'd clambered unsteadily onboard the boat (her appearance had given rise to groans from various members of the crew, and she turned on them a happy smile), holding a large pile of swaddling that slept and burped occasionally.

Latonya was already at the side, hand clamped to her mouth. Barbossa was standing beside her, reclining against the rail and asking her if she'd seen anything interesting in town. He was amused by the way Latonya would pleasantly attempt to answer but would be forced to break off as nausea hammered at her stomach and gullet. No matter how many times he tried the trick on her, Latonya always tried to respond.

Lovehaste had seen them standing together and had, of course, leapt to the wrong conclusion.

She'd marched over, nostrils flaring like twin sails, and turned the blackest look he'd ever seen on her face on the heaving Latonya.

"Who's this?" she demanded between gritted teeth of Barbossa.

He smiled winningly at her. "Miss Latonya Vaughn of Tortuga. My benefactress, I suppose yer might say." One of Lovehaste's eyes twitched. "Miss Vaughn, this is Lovehaste. My bane, I suppose yer might say."

Lovehaste had ignored him. "Captain Mariella Suzella Lovehaste (retired)," she said, somehow contriving to pronounce even her brackets coldly.

"I sank her ship_, Mystic Waters_, when first we met," Barbossa cheerfully informed Latonya.

Latonya had just enough control over her quivering digestive system to look round and give Lovehaste a disarming little grin. "'lo," she said, and launched into fish-feeding as the ship pulled out of the harbour.

Lovehaste wrinkled her nose. "Known each other long, captain?" she asked Barbossa, ice forming on her sentence.

"Quite some time," Barbossa said, shrugging. "She's one of the ladies of the night on Tortuga, so, yer see, I've seen a fair bit of her..." It wasn't telling a _lie_, as such. She _was_ a woman of easy affection, and he _had_ seen her naked. It wasn't Barbossa's fault if these two facts were not necessarily connected.

"I see!" Lovehaste burst out. "Well, that's- that's very interesting!" She chewed her lip, distressed.

"Aye?" Barbossa replied. "Fancy that."

Lovehaste had given him a look of very feminine venom (think viper with mascara on) and stalked off, the arms holding her baby trembling violently. The thing woke up and started to grizzle.

Barbossa grinned to himself. Maybe this was going to be enjoyable after all.

Maximo was roaring at the men for him. _Time to see what Tia Dalma's got to say for herself_, thought Barbossa, as the ship sped out into the open waters. He muttered to Maximo that he was going to have a nap, and to rouse him immediately if anything should happen.

Barbossa, during his captaincy of _The Black Pearl_, had not enjoyed sleeping in the Captain's Bed. It was smelly. It was itchy. It was abominable. He was delighted to find that the bed on board _The Revenge,_ whilst not exactly clean and bug-free, at least had sheets that looked as though they had once been white and didn't have a mattress that actually went for bracing walks around the cabin. He hit it fully clothed and was asleep pretty much instantaneously.

He dreamed...


	10. second dream

He was on board _The Black Pearl_ again, although this time it took him a while to recognise it, because the whole ship was lit up with beastly multi-coloured lights and there was some terrible pumping music emanating from, it appeared, the hold. Barbossa groaned- he knew where this was leading. He was reminded of his first mate days under Jack Sparrow, when he'd still loved Jack 'like a son'.

"Barbie!" Jack used to exclaim, about once a month.

"Yes, cap'n?" he'd wearily reply.

"Wouldn't yer say the stars are auspicious?" Jack would fling an arm up to the light-laden sky. "Wouldn't yer say the night is fresh? Well, wouldn't yer?" He'd grin at Barbossa, who'd have to stick to his half of the script and say yes, Jack had a weather eye for the weather.

"Yer know what that means, don't yer, Barbie?"

"Aye, Jack. Yer'll be wanting to have a dance competition." There was no-one on earth like Jack for dance competitions.

"Yes! And I choose _you_, mate, to be my partner!" Jack would half skip, half stagger over and fling his arms about Barbossa's shoulders. "Dun dun dah dun, dun dun dah _dun_," he muttered, doing a sort of impromptu tango on Barbossa's toes.

The dance competitions always met mixed response. Maximo hated them with a passion, as did the other thickset members of the crew. Men like Weatherby and Monk were shy and awkward about dancing, yet clearly wanted to be persuaded onto the floor, but it was the shy, awkward ones Jack invariably picked for the judge's panel. Ragetti, Pintel and their oddball friends loved the dance competitions and would leap into them with wild abandon, even without the rum which Jack was invariably soaked in.

Even during the curse years, particularly fine, clear nights would send Barbossa reeling off into terrible flashbacks. More than once in a dance Jack's wildly swinging hips would swing up into his groin, and leave him doubled over and clutching at Jack's arms for support. He was also often accused of not shaking his jelly convincingly enough. "At my age, Jack," he'd say soberly to the cha-cha-cha-ing maniac that was Jack Sparrow, "yer don't shake yer jelly because it's in danger of falling off."

"Don't make excuses!" Jack would snap, and bend over backwards. Barbossa would only just remember on time to catch him and swing him back upright.

So when his dream revealed a line-dancing Jack Sparrow, joined by Ragetti, Pintel, the gorgeous Miss Swann and her whelp fiancé Will Turner, the mute sailor Cotton, the miniature sailor Marty and Mr Joshamee 'Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Paint Thinner' Gibbs, he was depressed, but not surprised.

"_Aha! Barbie!"_ yelled Jack, neatly executing a tricky do-si-do around Will Turner, who managed to kick his own ankle. _"Come and join the fun!"_

"Thanks, Jack, but I'd rather throw myself overboard," Barbossa mumbled.

"_Don't be like that, mate,"_ Jack chided, spinning Elizabeth (she was dancing with a ferocious expression of concentration on her adorable face). _"After all, we're steering the ship towards the land of the dead for yer."_

Barbossa gave him a look often seen on kittens- mad, huge-eyed astonishment- and trampled off towards the captain's cabin, to see if there were any maps. _"Ah, yer've got two left feet anyway,"_ Jack called after him, and tripped up Gibbs.

When he managed to open the door to the cabin, he discovered it was _wallpapered_ with maps, and none of them appeared to show any recognisable landmass. Some of them were moving.

There were sheets of plain cream paper and a quill on the desk. He grabbed at the quill and tried to sketch some of the maps, but the quill pen refused to do what he wanted. It started writing eyeball-tingling symbols. Barbossa threw it down with a snort of disgust and staggered out again. The line dancers were gone, and with them the music and the lights.

There was a purple silk heap sitting in the middle of the deck, which resolved itself on closer inspection to be Lovehaste wearing the purple dress, although 'sitting in' would be a more appropriate verb. Barbossa vaguely saw she was breast-feeding her brat, and this alone was enough information. He lumbered away, and on a flash of sluggish inspiration climbed to the top of the crow's nest.

It seemed to take an age to reach the top. Barbossa could feel the ethereal wind pick up around him, and the air thin out. Latonya was already at the top, eating an apple. He took it off her but it turned to ash in his hands. Because he knew he was dreaming, he just scowled at it.

"_Look at de porpoises,"_ whispered Latonya. _"Dey say dem be de souls of dead sailors, keeping the ship safe."_

Barbossa peered down. The crow's nest was a _lot_ higher than he remembered and he felt a stab of vertigo cut him briefly. "Those aren't porpoises, you wench!" he burst out. "They're sharks!"

He leapt off the crow's nest and floated down like a feather- much like a feather, because he occasionally thought, _Oh come on come on fall faster_.

He landed with a thud beside Lovehaste. "There are _sharks_ in the water!" he gabbled at her. "Scores of 'em!"

"_So_?" she said, coldly. "_They're in the water. We're on the boat_. _Deal with it._"

Barbossa opened and closed his mouth. "Yes. But," he replied, lamely. He noticed for the first time she was feeding the baby not from her (shudder) breast, but from the new scar on her breastbone.

"Why- why are yer doing that?" he asked, woozily, pointing to the child. It turned and grinned at him- its gums were stained red with blood.

She rolled her eyes at him. "_Come on_," she said, nudging him. He sat down beside her cross-legged. "_You don't think Tia Dalma would have given me the gift of new life just for a bit of measly information about you and Jack_?"

"Um?" Barbossa replied.

"It _takes a lot of power to keep someone alive once they've died once, you know_," Lovehaste said reproachfully. She fingered the gunshot wound that wasn't hers. The baby screamed and she absentmindedly re-clamped its horrible mouth to the scar.

And she exploded.

Barbossa woke up with a disgusted, "Bleargh!" He reiterated himself once he saw what was on the wall beside the bed.

There _was_ some form of map, badly drawn and not yet finished, on the wall. A cursory glance at his fingernails revealed that he had dragged his torn and calloused nails along the wall to draw it. In his sleep.

Odd.

This train of thought was violently derailed by Maximo bursting into the cabin like a well-muscled tornado.

"Enemy ship firin' on us, sah!" he shouted.

Barbossa sighed and swung himself out of bed. It was another day in the life of a pirate.


	11. the authoress attempts a battle scene

Barbossa met Simbakka's fascinating and distracting selection of facial scars upon stepping out of his cabin. "Spanish merchant ship, cap'n," he said, succinctly, in the same voice he might have said, "Blind and daft old lady wandering around laden with jewels."

Barbossa grinned and turned to face the deck. "MAN THE GUNS, YOU ROTTING SONS OF WENCHES," he bellowed, superfluously as it turned out. The air was almost viscous with the smoke of cannons, and the noise was crushing. "HARD-A-PORT!"

The merchant vessel was in trouble. Heavily armed as it was, the large hull made it cumbersome in the water, and the cannons, whilst big, heavy and capable of doing serious damage if _The Revenge_ held still for long enough, were what Barbossa cheerfully referred to as 'a bugger' to load. Already there were more agonised screams than frenzied battle activity going on over on that side of the water.

With a neat swipe of his hand he picked out about seven men. "Grappling irons, boys! Board that floating gold-hoard!"

The Spanish captain evidently had had the same idea, as there were sailors, in uniforms (ergh) unsteadily clambering aboard _The Revenge_. Barbossa hated uniforms on a man. He picked a sailor at random, thumbing back the hammer of his gun.

"How's yer luck?" he asked, as the fellow raised his sword.

The sailor made the mistake of being distracted from his task of cleaving Barbossa's head open for a nanosecond. "Bad, I'd think!" Barbossa said happily, and blew his brains out.

The sailor's companion swung round with a Spanish curse but his ribcage collided with Barbossa's drawn sword with an interesting 'gristle-gristle-crack' noise. He fell over, very much dead.

"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me," Barbossa hummed madly under his breath, absentmindedly breaking the nose of another boarding sailor. Ketchum dropped the cannon ball he was carrying on the sailor's head, picked it up and ran for his cannon, picking off organic bits as he lumbered.

"FURL THOSE SAILS, YOU MAGGOTS," Barbossa affectionately called, then spun round to meet the indescribably petrified face of Lovehaste. He blinked and readjusted his mindset.

"Getbelowdeck_rightnow_," he blurred at her. Lovehaste just stared at him, apparently too in shock to even scream in an irritating and fainting-blossom-heroine manner. Barbossa noticed she was clutching her brat to her chest. The thing was oddly quiet; Barbossa caught himself wondering whether she'd suffocated it by holding the thing too hard. Shots whistled around their ears, but she was too stunned to even duck.

"_Now_Lovehaste_now_," he blurred, and shot the fingers off the Spanish boatswain creeping up behind her. "_Move."_

She stared at him still, flecks of the boatswain's blood on her twitching cheek. To his mild surprise, the boatswain himself hadn't given up and was struggling to draw his sabre. "Lovehaste," he said quietly, and she emptied a look of complete frightened blankness at him. "Lovehaste, move."

_Wham_.

The boatswain's eyes rolled up in his head and he keeled over sideways. Latonya slowly lowered her fist. Her sleeve was rolled up and, in the moment she'd thrown the punch, every single muscle was picked out on her arm. In a series of heavy, graceful movements, Latonya picked the boatswain up and swung him over her shoulder.

_What a woman!_ thought Barbossa. _More a man than my men! _Someone shot the feather in his hat off. "HIT THE SMALL GUNS! ON MAXIMO'S MARK!" he yodelled, not taking his eyes off the two females.

At the sound of Latonya's grunts of effort in getting the boatswain on her shoulders, Lovehaste suddenly came alive. She snapped round to Latonya. "Can you carry him down?" she barked, and it took a moment for Barbossa to realise she was talking about the brat.

Latonya took it in the crook of one elbow. She didn't look afraid in the slightest- Barbossa suspected she didn't have the mental agility to comprehend fear. "I'll take him down to de crew's quarters. You want I should stay wi' him?"

Lovehaste nodded ferociously, and Latonya swung coolly off, staggering slightly under the weight. The deck splintered up around her as someone unloaded a flintlock pistol at her ankles, but Latonya seemed to bear a charmed walk. She made it to the steps unharmed and vanished into the black beneath the ship.

"And yer just going to watch her go, are ye?" he asked Lovehaste, in a voice that suggested he knew _all about_ Lovehaste's total lack of maternal instinct.

She tried to stick out her chest. It was a tragic sight. "I'm going to help you fight," she said, and drew her ridiculous costume sword.

Barbossa swore liberally, and seamlessly added, "SHIFT! SHIFT! AIM FOR THE RUDDER CHAIN!" for the merchant ship was sluggishly attempting to move away. He vaguely saw Monk on board the boat slit the helmsman's throat.

"Don't be stupid," he snarled, striding off towards the cannons. "Get below deck where ye can only harm yerself."

"I want to help you!" squeaked Lovehaste indignantly. "Listen! STOPPER THE SMALL GUNS," she shrieked suddenly, resembling a demented banshee. "CONCENTRATE FIRE FROM THE CANNONS!"

"What are you doing?" yelled Barbossa, and threw himself onto the deck as a cannon ball came whistling through the air towards his skull. He heaved himself back upright. "For one, that's not proper fighting language and for two, _it's a bloody stupid idea!_ BELAY THAT ORDER, YOU CRETINOUS ROACHES!" he added.

"Let me _help_ you!" shouted Lovehaste, and she actually stamped her foot.

Barbossa laughed, more out of fury than amusement. "This is not a game, wench!" He made a swift decision and seized her by her sparse, mousy hair. She hollered as he started to drag her to the 'funbox'- a small grille in the deck leading to a tiny space at the edge of the filthy bilges, under the deck, where Barbossa occasionally threw prisoners, and then scorpions. (He'd made sure one was put on _The Revenge_ especially.) "I hope to hell yer don't get claustrophobic, Lovehaste," he told her, and chucked her inside the narrow hole. It was a longer way down than he remembered.

"Let me _out_!" wailed Lovehaste, to his retreating back.

The Spanish captain had ordered renewed fire from the cannons. It was clearly a last desperate act of bravery- the ship was sinking before Barbossa's very eyes. A few of his men swung aboard, laden with booty which they threw down the stairs to the hold, grim expressions on their faces.

It was, however, a gesture of some defiance. An unpleasant crunching sound suggested to Barbossa that they had better finish off the ship soon or _The Revenge_ would be unpleasantly low in the water.

"Water comin' in, cap'n," Maximo reported in his ear.

"Curses," muttered Barbossa. "TOSS A THUNDERBOX," he roared. "ALL MEN RETURN TO DECK! SWING TO STARBOARD! UNFURL THE SAILS! MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!"

A barrell full of gunpowder was duly fetched and thrown towards the merchant ship as _The Revenge_ started to move shakily, but speedily, away, awash with new plunder. Some good shot fired a bullet through it and it exploded as it hit the merchant ship's deck.

Hot air lashed across _The Revenge_. There was a brief moment of what Barbossa felt sure must be Hell momentarily flashing across the sea, and the ship groaned from its heart. Burning ash drifted gently onto his cheek. A ragged cheer stuttered up.

"Shut that," he snapped. "Save the celebrating for when we've emptied out belowdecks of the water."

"Cap'n! The funbox!" He glanced up sharply towards the speaker.

"What?" he demanded.

"The bilges are bulging with water!" the pirate blurted out, stammering a little over the alliteration. Barbossa's eyes widened and he flung himself towards the grille.

The top of Lovehaste's head was pressed right up against the grille, or what was visible of the grille amongst the debris. A fallen cannon had caved most of it in. A frantic stream of bubble was frothing over the bars, and her fingers poked up through the gaps, grasping at the air as if she thought she could pull herself out. The water from the grille stank abominably. The commotion within suggested she was kicking, in some sort of mad dying spasm.

"Get her out!" Barbossa thundered. "Move that cannon, you sons of mothers!"

He took her stiff, groping fingers in his fist and squeezed hard. She scratched at the calloused flesh of his palm so frantically she tore her nails.

_How long can a human being survive without air?_ he wondered to himself, as Maximo bellowed some buccaneers into lashing ropes around the fallen cannon. _Two minutes? No, call it three, Lovehaste must be pretty good at holding her breath with all those plot twists she has to deal with..._

The fingers became quite contorted but the kicking and the bubbles had stopped. The pirates succeeded in lifting the nose of the cannon, but pieces of the broken up deck were blocking the way.

_How long has it been now? Call it a minute and a half. Isn't there a few second or so after yer lose consciousness that ye can stay alive?_ He wished he'd experimented on prisoners a little more, instead of just tossing them over the side or slashing their throats. _Bear that in mind for next time_.

Rough, ripping hands were trying to clear the deck. The index finger moved weakly in his fist. Everything else about her was still.

_Two minutes? Two and a half? She must be conserving oxygen now that she's... stopped... moving... _

He gave a nonsensical bellow and, with strength astonishing in a man of years so advance, helped the pirates heave another piece of deck up. _Nearly there, nearly there._

Lovehaste was dragged up into the open, through the vile water. She looked like a dirty rag doll someone had thrown away, and she wasn't breathing. Barbossa slapped her around the face a couple of times, then realised this probably wasn't helping. He pounded at her chest instead.

Lovehaste's eyes flew open as if the lids were attached to strings that had just been rather suddenly jerked. She turned onto her side, coughed up even more of the foul water, then was graphically ill all over the place. Barbossa breathed out.

A weird giggle came from behind him, sounding oddly as if it was oscillating. He turned and saw Latonya, holding the cheerfully sniggering child.

"Bit of trouble?" Latonya asked, absentmindedly jiggling the thing.

Barbossa watched Lovehaste wipe her mouth and look around blearily. "Nothing serious," he said, and realised with a strange sinking feeling he was lying.


	12. cringing galore

Latonya, with her usual apathy and unthinking amiability, had locked the fingerless boatswain in the cells with a piece of bread and a tin cup of watered-down rum, instead of just pushing his face through the back of his head, as Barbossa would personally have done. He sent Latonya to help sort through the amassed loot and Lovehaste off to his cabin to take a look at the map, so he could kill the man without their protesting.

When he'd done with this small, annoying but necessary chore, he went to his cabin.

He didn't feel _bad_, as such, for almost killing Lovehaste. He'd done it before, after all, and doubtless, if it was useful to him, he'd to it again. But for some reason the sensation of Lovehaste's pathetic digits fluttering uselessly in his hands had stirred up two uncomfortable memories. Unsurprisingly, given that they were uncomfortable memories, one of them involved Jack.

Memory one was in his second year aboard _The Black Pearl_, when he'd slowly switched from adoring Jack to passionately hating his weasel guts. He was about halfway through this transformation (it was their second July together) when this particular memory took place.

They were docking at Tortuga at the time, and the heat made the air thick with stenches and lazy, fat, whining flies. Jack had come charging into his room from the knocking shop next door, quite white-faced beneath the dirt.

"_Did she charge extra for the whip?"_ Barbossa had asked, all mock-sympathy.

Jack shook his head violently, and opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. He started to do a strange, slow dance. Barbossa realised he was acting out what had happened, evidently too horrified to talk.

Jack made some quite graphic movements with his hands. _"She did WHAT?"_ Barbossa burst out, incredulous, and had gone to look out of the window to the establishment. A few busty women were hanging around outside in their corsets and petticoats. There were some musical yowls from an upstairs window. It looked like any normal cathouse to him.

"_Yer've got to help me get rid of these fangirls, Barbie,"_ Jack had said, weakly, and fallen over on Barbossa's bed. _"They just don't take, ARRGHNOOOGETAWAY for an answer."_

"_Can't yer break their legs, so they don't follow yer?"_ Barbossa replied, drily.

Jack turned a helpless look on him. _"Can't yer protect yer cap'n?" _he'd asked. Quite suddenly, Barbossa had felt the old love flooding back and he dearly wanted to smash the fangirls heads into walls. He'd reached out to take Jack's head between his hands and say murmured, comforting things, but suddenly Jack had sprung up.

"_I know!"_ he'd said. _"I'll sing to them! For some reason I can't fathom at all that makes everyone run a mile!"_

He'd rushed out, leaving Barbossa with his arms outstretched and a sensation of overwhelming sheepishness in his heart.

Memory two vaguely began when he'd been saying his goodbyes to Lovehaste after one of his visits. They were facing each other at the docks, she snivelling, he impatiently waiting for her to get her goodbye over with. He'd heard some dock workers whistling a simple, rather sad tune and had remarked (over her hiccuping, theatrical sobs) that it was a pretty little piece. Music was something he truly came to love during the curse years; hearing was one of the only two remaining senses he could still derive pleasure from.

Some months later he'd gone to visit Lovehaste when she was living on a little chain of interconnecting islands with some philosophic poets-and-dreamers types who were trying to build themselves a Eutopia. It was during the years of the curse. She had been dressed in a very disturbing get-up of woven palm leaves and a coconut, split in two, to cover up pieces of her that didn't actually exist. Her monobrow had also grown out of control- Barbossa suspected she'd tried to braid it. He remembered thinking, quite distinctly_, Amazing. The curse specifies 'feels nothing' yet I swear that was a cold sweat I just broke out in._

Lovehaste had greeted him in a misty, faraway voice that suggested she was on a purple passage in whatever story she thought she lived in. He'd had some harmless fun insulting her directly, just to listen to the rambling, distant answers she gave him, plagiarised from whatever texts her dreamer friends had brought with them to their Eutopia. (Evidently all Eutopians had to be well-read on literature of the world they'd shunned. He'd never understood that.)

What had surprised him was that Lovehaste had managed to catch a musician, and had poked him into playing Barbossa something on his lute by moonlight. (The poor devil had very nearly passed out with terror.) It was the same tune. He was quite impressed with her, but the knowledge that she'd faithfully retained the tune worried him to the quick.

It was these memories that occupied him when he stepped into his cabin. The brat was on his desk, squalling softly. When it saw him, it made the wise decision of shutting up.

Lovehaste was kneeling on his rumpled, distasteful bed, quill and paper in hand, frowning at the map. Her single brow crowded her small eyes most threateningly.

"Got me a map yet?" he asked her. She spun around, startled.

"What? No. It's- it's very complicated, and you haven't completed it," she said, breathing unevenly, and returned to her task. Her ears, rather obvious beneath her thin hair, glowed red. "I- er, I may take longer than anticipated..."

"Fine." Barbossa sat down and swung his legs onto the desk. The brat rolled its eyes towards his boots with an expression of bemusement.

Lovehaste cleared her throat daintily. Barbossa chewed the inside of his cheek to stop himself from suddenly leaping up, seizing a plunger from thin air and clearing her throat for her. He had a bad feeling she was going to ask about what had happened earlier.

"We should make it to Tia Dalma's in two days, three on the outside," he pre-emptively interrupted her. He stared at the thing in swaddling. What was she feeding it? Presumably she _was_ feeding it. It looked alive and nourished enough, although to be fair Barbossa's experience of babies was limited to having been one.

"Mm," Lovehaste said. The frown lines on her forehead were exactly parallel to her brow. Barbossa found this very distracting and mentally applied wet cement to her face.

"It's a boy child, isn't it?" he asked, suddenly.

Lovehaste froze. "Yes," she said, guardedly.

Barbossa's mind was plummeting down passageways he didn't want it to go. He tried to restrain it, but the tug of mental gravity was inexorable. "What _exactly_ did Tia Dalma do to, um, give yer the child?"

"Er," Lovehaste muttered. "There was... that is, the father..."

_Oh God_, thought Barbossa. _Yer didn't. I mean, I suppose yer must have done at some point in yer life but... oh no. Please don't tell me about it. Please don't say Tia Dalma was present. Please, PLEASE don't use the phrase 'engaged in intercourse'..._

"The father," repeated Lovehaste, like a hangman reading out a list of crimes. "Er. He- that is, the, um, conception, was a purely medical procedure..."

_Argh. Argh. Argh. Shoot me now._ "Oh aye?" _Although I suppose it's better than her telling me about a night of passion. Just about. _

"Yes. Tia Dalma... erm. I believe some of her rather organic brand of magic was involved..."

_Quick. Change the subject. _"Aye?" _QUICK!_ "So, what's the brat, I mean child, called?"

Lovehaste was an unnatural shade of red. "I, um, named him for his father."

"So his name is...?"

"Hector."

Barbossa went perfectly still for either a few seconds or a year. He was painfully aware he was doing his almighty best not to look at the child.

Then, with great presence of mind, he threw the inkwell at Lovehaste's head.


	13. daddy cool?

It was decided, without any communication taking place, that Maximo would take over command of the ship for a while. Anyway, no one wanted to disturb the Captain when he was so clearly in the kind of mood that stirs up storms and spits out lava.

Lovehaste was trying to wipe off the ink, and so far had only succeeded in smearing it evenly across her face. Dark blue suited her. A small bump was forming where the inkwell had connected with her skull.

As if to try and match Barbossa furious, curse-befuddled tirade, Hector Junior was screaming so hard it was a wonder his head hadn't popped off.

Barbossa paused to drag some breath into his lungs, then started again. "WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE SEVEN SEAS WERE YER THINKING, YE LIMP-HAIRED, LIMP-BRAINED SCUD OF NATURE?"

Lovehaste didn't even try to make an excuse, but just wiped her face on Barbossa's spare pillowcase, looking sad and doomed. Barbossa gave up, and tried to be reasonable.

"What the hell were yer hoping for?" he asked, over Hector Junior's caterwauls.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. "Nothing, really," she mumbled.

He shook his head in wonder. "I can't _be_ a father, Lovehaste. Yer do know what I am, aye? A pirate? Aye? That sounding familiar?" She nodded mutely, not meeting his eye. Hector Junior was really going for sound barrier-breaking. "I spend most of my time at sea. Y'know the sea? The big, blue, big, damp, _big_, thing? Aye? The thing I spend a _lot_ of my time on?" She nodded again, and started worrying at the edge of the blanket.

He sighed. This was like extracting teeth. "Yer do know why I became a pirate, don't yer, Lovehaste?" This time the nod was a trifle more enthusiastic.

He'd told her early on in their acquaintance, and then elaborated on it over the years. Daddy had been a pirate, and Mummy had been a fairly well-off spinster in a settlement town. Daddy did to Mummy what pirates usually do to women when they're raiding their towns, and Mummy had ended up with him. (Barbossa remembered his mother as a stolid and permanently sad woman, with a turned-down mouth and red puffy eyes. She'd married the first man who'd have her after Daddy had paid her his court, and turned out child after child, only two of whom survived beyond the fourth month. )

One of Barbossa's first memories was of him asking, with his hands on his hips, shouting very loudly, why he didn't have a daddy like all the other boys. Mummy had shaken her head and her lower lip had trembled, which made little Hector even more angry_, because Mummy never listens to me, Mummy's always crying in a corner, stupid cow_. He'd hit, with a six-year-old fist, the side of her head, and although it couldn't have hurt much, she gasped, fell off her chair, and burst into tears. He'd stood there, waiting for her to shut up, _stupid cow_, until she explained, through gulps, that his daddy was a pirate, a bad man, and he wasn't ever coming back to him, ever.

Barbossa had been eleven when he'd first killed someone. It was a lad named Quincy, a rough, rangy fourteen year old whom the alley kids all called Skip. Technically speaking, Mummy was of a social class that _just about_ could afford to keep its kids out of alleys, but then again Mummy could never really control her wayward firstborn.

Skip was a bully. He'd been steadily insulting Barbossa for about a week- the younger members of the street gangs were always initiated through abuse- although some glimmer of common sense did prevent him picking on little Barbossa physically. At the end of this long week, Barbossa had finally cracked.

"_Haha. Got no dad. Got no dad. Changeling! Hector's a little fairy changeling!"_ squealed Skip.

"_My dad's a pirate," _Barbossa had coldly replied, in his oddly musical, high voice. _"He'd slit your gizzards and make you walk the plank if he could hear you talking like that."_

"_Haha. Hector's got no dad. That makes you a bastard!" _Skip had continued, oblivious to his impending doom. _"Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!"_ He reinforced his point by jabbing his finger into Barbossa's shoulder on every first syllable. Barbossa let this go on for six chants on the word 'bastard', then had seized Skip's wrist and snapped it upwards.

Skip had opened his stupid mouth to howl and Barbossa had forced his fist into it, listening to the teeth crack with a new, thrilling satisfaction. He swung his other fist up, into Skip's fat nose, and heard the wonderful crumbling, crunching, damp sound of it breaking. Skip had fallen over backwards, a shocking pile of blood and rags, and only then did Barbossa realise he'd pushed Skip's nose through his skull. The boy was dead.

Little Barbossa had turned on his heel and walked calmly home, leaving the street urchins gaping and silent behind him. _Dad would be proud_, he thought.

Mummy couldn't even bear to be in the same room as him after that.

For two years he scurried around the settlement's criminal underground, his adolescence shaped by the scarred, snarling men and pitted, scowling women he met there. When he was thirteen, he gained a place as a cabin boy aboard a pirate ship, vowing to find his father. He never saw his mother again.

He'd searched for decades without any luck before he met Jack Sparrow. When he did, it was as if all those years had been spent in a silly dream and he'd only just woken up to the real world, and the real world centred on Jack.

The rest was history.

Now, Hector Barbossa looked gloomily over at the wailing pink sausage that was apparently his offspring. "Tough luck, brat," he told it, wearily. The thing shut up and gave him a look of confuddlement.

Lovehaste started to speak, in a flat voice devoid of emotion. "I don't expect anything of you," she said quietly. "It was something I wanted for myself. I didn't expect you to be involved at any point." She frowned suddenly. "Except, you know, where it wasn't avoidable. And Tia Dalma used tubes and things for that anyway." She caught Barbossa's eye and stopped giving details. "I know," she added, "that you already loved Jack like a son, and that this isn't- this must be painful for you."

Barbossa stared numbly at her. "Tubes," he repeated. "I see." He wished he didn't, but his imagination had always been rather vivid.

He was starting to feel extremely confused. Ye twerp, he wanted to say, all that 'like a son' business, yer can't really be that dense, surely? Surely yer _know_ what I mean? I thought yer interpreted _everything_ the uncomfortable way, why are yer making an exception now?

He said instead, "Of course this is painful. I'm a _pirate_, Lovehaste. I'm a rotting human being. The only difference between my body now and my body when I was cursed is that I can currently feel all the aches and twinges and pains that are slowly taking me apart. And I'm not a young one either. And now yer tell me I've got a son, just when I've reached the point when I can stop being miserable about never having a family, because I'm going to die in a few years anyway? Thanks, wench. Tubes don't be the worst of it."

She was starting to resemble a blue and white tiger, because tears were strolling their way down her thin cheeks. Her nose, however, was the same as ever, so Barbossa ignored it and the flowery sentences that came out of her mouth next, because it was only happening for the sake of the narrative.

When she'd finished, he said. "Get out of my cabin. I need to lie down. Take," he gestured towards Hector Junior, who appeared to have dropped off to sleep, "that away too."

She got up, taking her stationary with her, and wobbled over to the desk. She paused beside him.

"See this?" She was gesticulating towards her chest. Because she was almost the same height as him, Barbossa had to stand back to see what she was indicating. It was the gunshot wound, recently his and now hers.

"Aye. Very pretty," he said.

She gave him a tight, prim little smile. "If you're a dying man, why am I carrying your death around?" She picked up the child. "Think about it. Then have a really long conversation with Tia Dalma when we get there."

With this fatuous remark, she left. Barbossa stuck his tongue out at her back and went to lie down.

_Have a rest_, he told himself. _Ye deserve it. First Spaniards, then Lovehaste, and now babies. The horror never stops._

_Wouldn't you rather think about tubes?_ his mind said, apparently intent on keeping him awake.

_SHUT UP, BRAIN._


	14. third dream

When he succeeded in getting his brain to stop sending him perverse and gory images involving tubes, Lovehaste and (for some reason he didn't wish to investigate) a gigantic syringe, he ended up dreaming another dire dream.

He was in a cave and there was some sort of orb hanging from the ceiling, covered in tiny square mirrors. It threw a profoundly bewildering and not really all that illuminating light over the unfriendly black rocks.

Some discordant violin music started up. Barbossa groaned. _What's wrong with my dreams? Why can't I just have dreams about being chased by evil carrots through seas of lemonade, or of playing the flute in my drawers to a hundred grumpy Naval officers? Eh? Why do people always SING?_

Ghastliness was soon realised as Lovehaste stepped out of the shadows, wearing so little that Barbossa protectively shut his eyes. She had also gone mysteriously blonde, which made her look like some part of her ancestry had involved a yellow sheep, and was wearing unnaturally red lipstick that showed up the unhealthy pallor of her skin.

"_Hector, I know you're going to be upset,"_ she started to sing (if you could call it singing- Barbossa had heard Lovehaste sing and had been put in mind of a sow in labour), _"as I was always your biggest sore. But you should know by now, that I'm not healing."_

"Yer got that spot on," muttered Barbossa. "Yer've grown on me- like a fungus." He risked one eye. Lovehaste was wearing a pair of very, very tight black breeches in a mysterious stretchy material, which showed off the toothpick-like qualities of her legs, a black belt around her (admittedly very slender and trim) waist, and a black corset designed for someone rather more substantial, and incidentally with breasts like pyramids. Barbossa hurriedly shut the eye again.

"_You always ignored right and wrong, so I needn't explain it in this song. I'll just let you know now that I know how you're feeling.."_

"The hell yer do!" Barbossa exclaimed, because he was cautiously sneaking glances through slitted lids and had seen Lovehaste dancing about with horribly wild abandon. Skipping back and forth seemed to be involved a lot. If she had any thought for how he felt, she'd go away, put some clothes on and then incinerate herself.

"_The subject that always made you shout, the thing you warned me all about... I've got something to confess, so please don't hit the ceiling. Please..."_

"Argh," Barbossa said, by way of commentary. Lovehaste was attempting to gyrate.

"_...Hector don't screech, you'll just make me weep. Hector don't screech, you're dreaming and you're asleep. But I've made up my mind, we've got to bring up this baby."_

"Ye must be JOKING." Even as the words sidled out of his lips, he knew she wasn't. No one wearing a corset with two pointy cones attached had any sense of humour whatsoever. If they had, they'd have glanced down and died laughing by now.

"_Ooh, we've got to keep the baby,"_ Lovehaste continued. She was unstoppable, and she was jumping around.

"_You say that you could never stay with me, you're death-on-legs and you adore the sea. You think I should be put to the sword, or lobbed overboard."_

Barbossa looked embarrassed. He hadn't realised he was thinking that quite so loudly.

"_But I know the real reason why you sail! And I know that you're not so weak and frail! I know the hopes you've had that at your soul have gnawed... please..."_

"The crew of the _Pearl_ is my family, though! I don't need an extra one with a female in it!" he protested. "Stop yer singing, please!"

"_...Hector don't screech, you're in this way too deep. Hector don't screech, you're dreaming and you're asleep. I've made up my mind, we're going to bring up this baby. Ooh, we're going to bring up this baby..."_

"Do I not get a say?" exploded Barbossa.

"_Hector Hector, if only you'd understand, how meticulously I've got this planned. This isn't some clever plot twist. I am in love. I am in love... so please..."_

This creeped out Barbossa a little too much. He drew his pistol (apparently he dreamed full weaponry too. Cool.) and fired a shot at the glittery orb thing. It exploded and the music blacked out with the light. Lovehaste never reached the chorus.

Breathing heavily, despite the fact it was a dream, Barbossa turned about 180 degrees and ran into the total blackness. Because he was dreaming, he felt like he was running through syrup.

"_Just going for a jog, mate?"_ asked a familiar voice. _"Or did yer decide the handbasket was taking too long, and wanted to run all the way ter Hell in case you missed the overture?"_

Barbossa stopped mid-run. "Jack," he hissed between his teeth.

A vague blue light undulated into being, illuminating Jack, who looked perfectly at ease floating on nothingness and eating a banana suggestively. Barbossa winced. _"Long time no see, Barbie,"_ he smirked. _"Incidentally, I'm about four days away from being eaten by a giant squid beastie. With mucus."_

"It's these little homely touches that make the difference," growled Barbossa.

"_So yer'd better hurry along to Tia Dalma's so's yer can save me, savvy?"_ Jack added, and finished off the banana with some tongue curling trick that made thousands of tiny little cold feet walk all over the inside of Barbossa's skin. _"I can only keep my hat from being digested for a certain amount of time."_

"Why not just buy a new one and save me the trip?" Barbossa suggested wearily, and was predictably ignored.

"_I 'spect yer wondering how to find me. Well, wonder no more, Barbie matey. I happen to have here... A MAP."_

"Aye?" Now _there_ was a surprise.

"_Watch,"_ Jack told him importantly, and turned his banana skin inside out. A small scrunched up piece of paper dropped out and rolled around the floor.

"Well done," Barbossa said. "Most children prefer marbles, but I suppose we have ter make allowances for yer..."

The little paper ball, however, had big ideas. When it grew up it wanted to be... huge...

It was unravelling and expanding like an exploding chrysanthemum made of parchment. As Barbossa watched with detached terror, origami folds swallowed up his legs and billowed around his waist.

Jack was borne aloft by several pages. _"See yer later, crocodile!"_ he called. Barbossa sighed, but was lost in the rising paper.

Suddenly aware he might stop breathing if the paper surrounded him, he began to claw at it. Wherever he touched the paper peeled away slightly to reveal a silvery film underneath. No matter how he scratched and scratched, more and more layers of silvery stuff apppeared, writhing before his eyes, into new and frightening shapes. As the leafs rose higher and higher, and the space he stood in became tighter and tighter, he caught himself thinking, _maybe Lovehaste's singing isn't all _that_ bad..._

He woke up.


End file.
